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Tuesday, April 18, 2017

CALGARY -- The Calgary Flames are taking a simple approach trailing 3-0 in their best-of-7 Western Conference First Round series against the Anaheim Ducks: One game at a time.

"The reality of the situation is it's a tough situation," Flames coach Glen Gulutzan said. "The reality of the situation is, we're focused on Game 4. You can't win all four games in one night, or in your mind in the same day. You just have to get focused on Game 4.

"The reality is, is how do you eat an elephant, right? One bite at a time."

How about a duck?

"That's tough,'' Gulutzan said. "I don't know. First thing I can think of is pull the feathers off.

"I think we've done some damage over there. They know they're in a good series. They're a great team. What about the Ducks is that they're a great team. They won [the Pacific Division] for a reason. It wasn't a fluke. They're a great team. They've got great players. They have good character in there. They've won before. They have all the ingredients there, for sure.

"I think for us it's about resolve. I don't really look at the Ducks and say, 'OK, how are we going to beat the Ducks?' I look at as, 'How are the Flames going to be the best they can be tomorrow night?'"

Anaheim won Games 1 and 2 at Honda Center, each 3-2, and came back after trailing by three goals to win a Stanley Cup Playoff game for the first time in their history, 5-4 in overtime in Game 3 on Monday.

"I think as for Game 4, all the doubt hopefully can be on them," Calgary forward Matthew Tkachuk said. "I mean, we're in a position where we have nothing to lose right now and we're going to be playing free, but we're going to be playing the way we've been playing all year, and that's hard and that's going to be trying to get a win. I think they're a team that doesn't want to be embarrassed by a team that's down 3-0.

"We're going to try to do everything in our power to send a message and just try to make them a little bit nervous over there. It's a tough hill to climb but it's been done before."

Four teams in NHL history have won a playoff series after trailing 3-0: the Toronto Maple Leafs in 1942, the New York Islanders in 1975, the Philadelphia Flyers in 2010 and the Los Angeles Kings in 2014. Teams leading a series 3-0 are 180-4.

The Flames, who had winning streaks of six games (from Nov. 30-Dec. 10) and 10 games (Feb. 21-March 13) in the regular season, desire to become the fifth. It'll take a four-game winning streak to get there, starting with Game 4.

"We're not looking and saying, 'Hey in 1972 these guys did this …,'" Gulutzan said. "We didn't draw on anything from the past or some motivational video of somebody overcoming something. We just really want to keep the focus on our game, that we played well, and we think we can win Game 4.